 [Larger view] | The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition)
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| Its About Addiction | |
| Lord of the Rings is not an epic struggle between "good" and "evil". That level of analysis is more appropriate for pop trash, such as Lucas' Star Wars.
Lord of the Rings is about addiction. Any addict, or anyone who works with addicts, will immediately recognize the ring's affect on its bearer as quite similar to the affect of serious addictive elements on the addict, such as that found in heroin addiction, alcohol addiction, or religion addiction. There are numerous parallels between the power of the ring and addictive behavior: the transformation that occurs in Bilbo, Frodo, Gollum and the Ringwraithes; the insipient, all-consuming desire to use the drug, but also the fear to do so; Frodo's desire to see Gollum restore to Smeagol, so that Frodo may hope to also return to a pre-addictive state; the inability to return to a pre-addictive state, as with Bilbo and Frodo; the overwhelming temptation to use, even among those who are cognizant of its terrible descrutive power, as with Galadriel and Gandalf; the development of multiple personalities, as with Gollum/Smeagol; the isolation of addiction, as with Gollum living alone in the depths of the Misty Mountains for countless years with his "precious"; the discarding of loved ones, as with Frodo to Sam or Smeagol to Deagol; the delusion of strength acquired by addictive usage, such as with Boromir and Faramir; the deterioration of perceived strength over time, and ultimate corruption of the soul, as with Gollum and the Wraithes. These are all highly correlated with serious addictions. With this understanding of addiction in mind, it is a painful yet inspirational experience to view the epic journey that occurs in the three LOTR movies. So much is familiar. Even Frodo's and Bilbo's decision to accompany the elves across the waters to live out their days is indicative of a life that has been utterly and irreversibly changed due to past addiction - the addict is never really cured. Thank you so much Peter Jackson, for bringing Tolkein's books to life. Now, how about The Hobbit? | |
| The greatest movire I have ever seen from an extreme critic | |
| There's something about this that just takes you and punches you straight in the stomach. Peter Jackson took what was already extremely earthy and honest book material and then supercharged it into this fantasy-visual epic. Some minor touchups and tweaks here and there and you have a tight true to fandom, fresh, morally relevant masterpiece. I popped this sucker in my PC, within my dark lonely apartment and immediately felt like I was amongst good friends on a grand Kick-Ass adventure. Real mellow too.
Good job! Please make more films like this Hollywood. Staying true to the original concept roots while regarding the film version really wins every time. I only saw the cut version and need to see the extended as i thought the stories were too complicated in only 3 hours. Now off to the other two! Whoohoo! | |
| Jackson Even Improves on a Great Story. Phenomenal | |
| `Fellowship of the Ring' is the first of the three movies making up the cinema version of the novel, `Lord of the Rings' by philologist J. R. R. Tolkien. This is one of the most influential popular novels of the 20th century. Other bases of big motion pictures such as `Ben-Hur' and `Gone With the Wind' can't hold a candle to it as it had an influence far beyond its role as the basis for a movie script. For starters, `Lord of the Rings' has had a large and growing readership from its original publication in the mid 1950s to the present, while I suspect practically no one reads Lew Wallace's `Ben-Hur' any more and few people have recently read Margaret Mitchell's `Gone With the Wind'.
It is almost impossible to speak of any one of the three volumes or movies by itself. They do not in the usual sense of the word form a trilogy of three independent novels related by common characters, location, and history. `The Lord of the Rings' is a single novel which was serialized in three volumes published over two and a half years in the mid 1950's. One virtue we did get from the division into three titles by Tolkien is that Peter Jackson had a valid basis on which to split a single story into three long movies totaling close to 10 hours of viewing time. There is simply no way the whole story could be squeezed into three hours. Ralph Bakshi's attempt to do it in the early 1970's was a total failure. Peter Jackson can thank his lucky stars that so many people in his audience were familiar with the novel. Otherwise the cliffhanger ending to `The Fellowship of the Ring' could have easily killed any interest in the movie rather than, as it did, enhance expectations for the second and third installments. I can still remember overhearing a fellow audience member muttering that he wanted his money back upon leaving the theatre after seeing Frodo and Sam paddle off across the Anduin, Merry and Pippin being rushed off to Orthanc, and Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas dispairing over the collapse of the Fellowship. This is not to say that `The Fellowship of the Ring' is not without its rewards. With all of the truly demoniac scenes in the second and third movies, not to mention Gandalf's heroic stand against the Balrog in the Mines of Moria, I really find the single scariest moment in the whole movie to be the one I read on a dark Saturday night alone in our house while the dark riders on their black horses were chasing Frodo seated on a white horse in front of the Elven warrior Glorfindel as he races towards the river guarding the approaches to Rivendell. It is no surprise that this scene is one of the most powerful in Jackson's movie. Jackson even improves on the scene by replacing the mighty warrior, Glorfindel with the very slender, delicate looking Arwen, who would seem to not have the snowball's chance in hell, elven magic or no elven magic, standing against the nine black riders. For me, Jackson has ably captured virtually every scene he touched by matching or improving on my imagination. He does a similarly excellent job with enhancing the most important event in the whole book, the confrontation with the Balrog and the apparent loss of Gandalf. And, as many have said before, the New Zealand scenery played a major role in helping to breath life into the words. Can anything have done so well in realizing the Misty Mountains? While almost all the scenes in `The Two Towers' made it to the screen, important parts of both `The Return of the King' and `The Fellowship of the Ring' were understandably left behind when the film was done. Oddly, the single most interesting character of the volume, Tom Bombadil, was practically the only significant character left out of the movie. Bombadil is quite the `deux ex machina', as he rescues the four hobbits from their first two perils without being given much of an introduction, even by know-it-all Gandalf. Bombadil only crops up one afterward in the council of Elrond where it is said that if the magic ring is given to him, he will probably loose it and just as he was `the first', he will be the last to disappear under the shadow cast by ubervillain Sauron. In all my readings of Tolkien, Bombadil has always been the most elusive and interesting character, even more so than the wizards, as the wizards, the elves, and every other creature in Middle Earth (with the possible exception of the Ents) is subject to the evil of the ring. This suggests that all the peoples of Middle Earth except Bombadil and the Ents are immigrants from somewhere else. `The Silmarillion' tells in great detail how the elves came to Middle Earth, and it is clear that the wizards and the men of Gondor and Arnor came from places beyond Middle Earth, but not Bombadil. What's more, Bombadil seems to have power over the ring, as he seems to make it disappear before the hobbits' eyes. Bombadil and his soul mate Goldberry seem to be great archetypes for the hippie counterculture of the 1960s. In fact, of all the characters in `Lord of the Rings', the contrast between Bombadil and Gandalf are two of the most interesting archetypes relevant to modern humans. I certainly have less trouble identifying with these two than with the diminutive, hairy-toed hobbits. While the driving energy of the story comes from the need to overthrow the great evil Sauron, the greatest interest comes from battles of conscience on a much more `human' scale, as it occurs in Boromir, Gollum, Faramir, Theoden, and Frodo Baggins. The most important instance in this film is the struggle of Boromir between his sworn allegiance to the quest of the fellowship versus his fealty to his father, Denethor, steward of Gondor. |
